The Art Of A Memory

The month of April is full of Awareness projects. Things like: Stress Awareness Month, Alcohol Awareness Month, National Child Abuse Awareness Month, and Sexual Assault Awareness Month. I wrote the following paper on the effects of these situations that need more awareness.

The following paragraphs is a paper I wrote titled “The Art of A Memory”.

Memories are engraved in our minds. We can’t take back memories, or erase them, leave them. Memories are stuck in our brain, stuck in our hearts, our souls, our whole entire self. We try to make the pain of a bad memory, leave. And we try to enhance the effects of a good memory. We can’t get enough of the good, and want to stop the bad. For something fed, grows and something starved, dies. We want to starve the bad and feed the good. But memories can’t be tampered with. They are permanent. They are scars. They are us.

Without memories we are nothing, but a human being going around this world with no experiences. We need experiences to grow. We can only grow, with pain. Pain releases experience. It doesn’t define us. But what does is how we move on and learn from the pain. That is what defines us.

The good. The bad. Memories express the feelings we have trapped inside. Feeling of anger, sadness, joy, excitement, pain. Memories express the sights we’ve seen, the smells. The things we’ve touched and felt. Not emotionally felt, but physically. Without memories we are nothing. Without memories, nothing would happen.

A single memory can change everything. A memory of death, of abuse, neglect, brokenness. That memory changes us. It changes our lives in ways no one expects. Suddenly we take a left turn to darkness. A right turn to depression. We do downhill to rock-bottom. A place people shouldn’t have to suffer in. Yet we do. Yet people are full of darkness, and depression. And hundreds, upon thousands, upon millions of us hit rock-bottom. All for different reasons. All from different memories.

The power of a memory, the pain the suffering the turmoil. Can take drastic turns. Turns to cut. To drink. To pop pills. Memories can even send you to commit suicide. Something that is too real for many people. Something that is a reality. And a reality from a memory.

Why should we sit? Why should we be still? Why should we do nothing when people are suffering? People who were cutting, who were drinking and popping pills, whatever it may be. People who went so far down into a living hell at rock-bottom. People suffer and you sit around doing nothing? No memory should result in death. And because of a miracle, mine didn’t. But that doesn’t mean anything. A memory is still there. A memory still has raw pain, and a memory can change everything.

So don’t sit around doing nothing. Get up and move. Help someone suffering, in pain and in turmoil. Because you could save a life. The person sitting next to you has over a 70% chance to experience something so terrible, so life threatening, so painful that it would scar them forever. Maybe even send them to rock-bottom. Maybe even send them to want to die. So save them, don’t try to erase the memory. It can’t be done. Just help them up. Give them a ladder, better yet, put them on your shoulders and pull them up from rock-bottom. Because it is never too late to act. It is too late when they aren’t here anymore.

So act, move, get up. This is reality. This is our society. But we can change it, we can move, we can act, we can change this. But it only happens if we get up. Help someone, save someone. Make someone’s day. Before it is too late.